Thursday, May 2, 2013

iNSD (or for those of you who don't speak digiscrap, International Scrapbook Day!)

It's technically Saturday (always the first Saturday in May), but many shops have already started their festivities and sales. It's an awesome time of the year. (Cue the big cheesy grin.)

But before I get into that, let me tell you a little story. Once there was a lovely girl who had almost completely filled up her terabyte external hard drive with thousands of photos and WAY too many digiscrap supplies. This was her only source for these things. Her computer was getting older, so to make it run faster she stored nothing on the computer's hard drive and EVERYTHING on the external hard drive.

And then one day it crashed. And the data recovery folks couldn't get any more than 8% of the data (for a cool $900!). So she lost everything. And she cried a lot.

Moral of the story: BACK UP YOUR FILES!!!!!

But that isn't actually why I'm telling you this story (though it is a good moral, believe me....). I want to tell you about the....opportunity....this has given me in terms of my digi stash. Before my hard drive crashed, I was trying to slowly make my way through my supplies and eliminate the excess. It was a hard process. Not a fun process. But now since my involuntary purge, I "get" to start over.

When I first started digiscrapping, I collected freebies like crazy. 'Cause they were free! Well, this time around, I am EXTREMELY picky about freebies. I only download

1) Templates (I adore templates, they do the hard work for me)

2) Full kits that I REALLY like (no mini kits unless they are absolutely incredible)

3) The occasional alpha or something else that I fall in love with

I do NOT download

1) Mini kits

2) Anything requiring a daily download (I think my time is worth more than that)

3) Blog trains (again, the time issue, and I also feel often they just aren't cohesive, though there are some big exceptions to this)

4) Odds and ends

I have found that all those things just clog up my hard drive and I just don't use them.

This leads me to iNSD!!! Man, is this a week of craziness in digiscrap land! There are TONS of freebies, and this event (and iDSD in November) are my blog train exceptions. So I thought I'd tell you about the freebie trains I'm following this weekend:

The Daily Digi (this is not just a iNSD thing, it runs all year and is a TERRIFIC way to build your stash)

And some eye candy....some of my favorite purchases (or plan to purchase as soon as the sale starts!):
(images linked)

Whew. Believe me, I could link up more!!! :)(And if you think I must be spending a fortune, well, you're right! My husband offered me a very generous budget to replenish my digi stash since we didn't spend 900 buckeroos on data recovery...bless his little heart....)